Town tries to tap drinkers to thwart Trenton’s tax grab

(Noah K. Murray/The Star-Ledger) Point Pleasant Beach: The state gets rich off the locals.

Trenton, we have a problem.

Vince Barrella keeps trying to get that message across from his perch in Point Pleasant Beach, where he is the mayor. But he might as well be sending it from outer space.

The problem is that the state collects massive amounts of revenue from the towns. Instead of getting the money back, the mayors get lectures from the governor on how to run their towns.

“Everybody in Trenton wants to beat up on the small towns,” Barrella said. “But the reason the state is in trouble is not the small towns.”

On Tuesday, the state League of Municipalities held a news conference at which mayors from around the state highlighted the way in which the state has been taking their receipts. The towns used to collect these revenues directly from utilities and use them to reduce property taxes. But in the Whitman years, the state took over collection of the revenues. Soon, the state started keeping the cash. The Christie administration is now spending half a billion dollars a year that should be going for property tax relief, the mayors said.

But that’s just small change compared with the income and sales taxes the state collects from the towns, Barrella said. Most people think a Shore town such as Point Pleasant Beach gets rich off the bennies who frequent the boardwalks. Nope.

“Everybody touts tourism as great for the towns, but it’s really great for the state,” he said. “The local government furnishes all the infrastructure and the state gets all the revenues.”

Barrella estimates the state collects about $30 million a year in taxes from the businesses in his town. That leaves the locals to pay for police and other services out of their property taxes.

Barrella, who is a law professor in his day job, has come up with a creative way to generate some revenue for property tax relief. He wants to impose a midnight bar closing — along with a fee for bars that wish to stay open late.

That ordinance was introduced at a meeting of the borough council Tuesday evening. Also introduced was a companion measure that would ban bennies from late-night parking in the neighborhood near the boardwalk.

The crowd was divided between residents fed up with the late-night noise and backers of the big boardwalk bars that cater to the “Jersey Shore” crowd. There was lots of booing from the latter whenever one of the former got up and complained about the bad behavior of the bennies.

“Liquor has become the king of Point Pleasant Beach,” said one ­homeowner. “If every business depends so heavily on people who drink till 2 in the morning and stagger around drunk, then Point Pleasant Beach has become a lousy place to live.”

That won him a round of boos.

The defenders of the status quo argued that Point Pleasant Beach has always been a tourist town and always will be. One woman pointed to the “Top of the Inland Waterway” slogan on the town seal behind the council members, which shows people engaged in various forms of recreation.

After the meeting, Barrella pointed to the sign and said to me, “Top of the Inland Waterway? I see boats and I see fishermen. I don’t see Jell-O shots.”

Both ordinances won introduction by a one-vote margin. They will be up for a final vote next month.

If the bar-closing measure is adopted, it will represent either an illegal usurpation of state taxing power or a clever way around it.

The ordinance mandates a midnight bar closing, but bars can stay open till 2 a.m. if they pay an annual fee of $60 per patron. The first 200 patrons are free, which makes the smaller bars exempt from the fee. But the big boardwalk bars could pay upward of $50,000 a year each.

Even that’s not enough to pay for all the special police needed to keep the crowd under control, said Barrella, which he estimates at more than $400,000 a year.

Last summer was particularly rowdy. The town had to appropriate an extra $155,000 for police. Barrella said that exceeds the entire increase permitted under the 2 percent cap Gov. Chris Christie spends so much time bragging about.

“I sent the governor a letter pointing out the issues,” he said. “I haven’t heard back.”